Tag Archives: NAV TechDays

I had much second thought about whether I should even blog this one. You know, it so profoundly belongs in the Duh! category that I have actually created the Duh! category specifically for this post.

Now, fasten your seatbelt. I apologize for what you are about to see, but apparently people do write code as the example below. And I sh*t you not, you can’t really make this crap up, but this is what people do:

This year my work got a better of me. For five years in a row I have posted all my demos and materials from NAV TechDays sessions right after them. However, this year, I failed. And I apologize for this.

But, as the saying goes, good things come to those who wait, and here it is – all the materials from my “JavaScript Architecture: Turning Pain into Gain” session are here.

And yes, I almost forgot… Somebody (sorry, I didn’t catch the name) asked me to put my life hack on the blog as well, so here it is. For all of you who were not there, I use this as a template for declaring .NET variables – until Microsoft provides means to declare them in a simpler ways. Inline, anyone?

Thanks to everybody who attended my session today at NAV TechDays 2014 in Antwerp. As promised, here are the goodies from the session. I’ve simply taken the objects and I deliver them here with no explanations or comments – when Luc publishes the sessions and the slide decks on Mibuso, you’ll be able to figure out what’s what. I hope you don’t mind.

I’ve also included my demo from the PRS session today, about the Service Locator pattern. The ZIP file does not include the Visual Studio solution – you can find it in my previous post, that I’ve put here yesterday.

I hope you find these examples useful and that they help you get started with .NET Interop quickly.

When comparing .NET variables, including Enums, you cannot use C/AL comparison operators. To compare .NET variables, you must use the Equals method (of the System.Object type) that all .NET types implement or inherit. So, instead of IF var1 = var2, or IF var1 = var1.EnumValue (in case of an Enum), just write IF var1.Equals(var2), or IF var1.Equals(var1.EnumValue).

I see this mistake often being made or attempted by developers, even though it has been documented inside .NET Interoperability documentation since it was introduced with 2009 R2.

Make sure that you don’t access the Microsoft.Dynamics.NAV JavaScript object before the document ready event fires. If you do so, you might experience problems on Chrome when the user refreshes the browser (F5). It appears that on refresh Chrome loads (and runs) scripts in different order, and depending on how complex scripts included in your project are, your code might get executed before Microsoft’s script is loaded, and it will cause nasty script errors. This occurs only on Chrome on PC.

When you have to format C/AL variables (numbers, dates/times, booleans) for exchange with other apps, call FORMAT(variable,0,9) instead of simply FORMAT(variable). The format 9 formats the variable according to XML standards, and this value can then be interpreted correctly on any system with any regional settings. This is useful also when passing string-formatted values from C/AL to C# or JavaScript.

To check if a BLOB field has a value, you call its HASVALUE function. For example: IF Item.Picture.HASVALUE THEN;

In older versions, earlier than NAV 2009, you had to call CALCFIELDS before you could check HASVALUE, which – if you think of it, did not make much sense. This was changed in NAV 2009, so ever since that version you can check HASVALUE before you decide to call CALCFIELDS first. It makes all the sense – you don’t need to pull up to 2GB of data over just to see if anything is inside.

If you are an old-school guy (or just old, as me), and you CALCFIELDS first, HASVALUE next, maybe it’s time for you to reconsider it.

Rembember – the pattern is: IF Field.HASVALUE THEN Rec.CALCFIELDS(Field);